whirlwind weekend

I wrote on here about a week ago about how we were missing someone from my team at work. Well, I’ve been filling in for that person over the last 2 almost 3 weeks and I seem to have a talent for the position. So I’m applying for it! It will mean some changes to my schedule but nothing too major. I’m hoping I get it but if I don’t then I’m back to my regular schedule and same old job. We’ll see what happens. I think it will be good in terms of my art too, as it will leave me with regular hours, and working a typical week of only 40 hours. Yay.

So that being said I’ve been on a whirlwind of making books this weekend. My boss unearthed a treasure trove of old signs and passed them off too me. After a very funny request for a book made with the poster of our regional president, I was off with a good stack of posters. I, being the ham, I am obliged her with the book of our regional president and it was a hit. It is hilarious. I won’t show it here but it’s hilarious if you know the company.

Today I made a massive stack of jotters. 72 to be exact. Of course some of them are screw ups but most were good. I’ve listed 1 set to eBay and 2 sets to etsy.

I also finished a notebook for a custom order. I’m working on another custom project as well. So I've had a few busy weeks. Next week should be busy as well. BUT I have a pre-scheduled 3 day weekend coming up and it should be awesome. Well, I'll probably geek out, clean my house and watch all my Tivo'd episodes of the season premieres of the shows I like to watch.

BEST

The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team (BEST) captured a tresury and it's viewable here:
Treasury, and yes I'm on it!

ebay listings

It’s been a long week for me here. I’ve been working extremely hard at the DayJob which has left me still little time to work on books. It will pass soon. We’re hiring for the missing person and all should be better after that.

PHEW!

However I’m listing some of my backstock items to eBay, you can see them here.

I’ve got 2 sets of 6 jotters, 2 one off graffiti jotters and a large hedgehog journal covered in marbled brown leather- it’s awesome.

I’ve also started to rededicate myself toward making art. I’m focusing on working in my moleskine with gouache and painting things out of the news. I should say people from the news.

I’m getting half as much done on books as normal and it’s frustrating me. I’m almost done with a hedgehog project that I started weeks ago only to find that I’ve not gotten it done… I’m like 2 steps from finishing it… GRGH, silly mortage, why do I need to pay you? Kidding.

Listings

Just a quick note but the pictures below are all from the listings I have on eBay now. You can find them here.

Relisted on eBay

So after being completely angry with eBay for the last week I’ve decided to relist my items that were pulled down, they were all ready for eBay anyway, so I figured I’m not out anything but my precious time to relist them. So you can find them here.

oh ebay you fickle thing you

Well, after yesterday I had hoped that my listings were safe but fully expected them to come down. So this morning when I got up I wasn’t sure what to expect. So to check my email and find that 2 of the 3 remaining listings were gone didn’t surprise me, but the randomness of the removal is what gets me. The final listing also had the same string of keywords and was also listed at the same time. So I don’t get it.

I understand that I’m in violation of the rules, but I’ve literally been listing with those same titles for years, with not one peep of rules violation or warning or indication that they were in violation of the rules.

I also removed the word “like” from my listing, replacing it with “better than.” Both of those listings were removed. However, the words “better than” were not on the list.

I sent a note to eBay regarding the matter and apparently you can’t compare your items at all to another in the listing title. So I can’t even include the word moleskine or cahier at all. Even though cahier is French for notebook. So I’m screwed.

I hate ebay even more today than I did yesterday. But I’m between a rock and a hard place. Etsy is great and I’d love to do all my sales through it but I’ve always done the bulk of my sales through eBay. I’ve stuck with it through thick and thin but this may be where I draw the line. I’m carefully weighing my options, and I’ll come out with a plan soon. I wish this could have happened on a different week, I’m working crazy hours at my DayJob and I’m literally coming home to fall exhausted into bed, if I had more time I’d be able to deal with this in a more effective manner and get the listings back up on eBay the next day.

So those of you who are bidding, I’m sorry eBay stinks these days but expect that one last listing to come down tomorrow. I’ve contacted someone at eBay regarding my attempts to edit the title and being unable to do so, and I’m hoping that having made those attempts will get me some slack but I expect not.

(On a side note- I took a look at some of the other listings, and I’ve noticed that they do seem to be cracking down on this across the board. Knockoff bags, shoes etc are all getting taken down too, so I don’t feel so bad, but I’m expecting that for me to come into the radar that some one reported me.)

eBay sucks

Again eBay renews my love hate relationship for them. I listed 6 items using my templates. Everything looked good, bids were coming in, and then I got up this AM to find 3 of my 6 listings had been taken down, by eBay. I had a form email in my email telling me what I had done wrong- used LIKE in my title. I’ve been listing items for YEARS with LIKE in the title. Never once have I received an email telling me that I can’t do that.

When a listing is placed, if there are words in the title that uses a prohibited word their listing format should tell a seller when it may violate eBay’s rules, that way a seller can amend it then rather than have it taken down by eBay.

Here again eBay screws the little seller selling low cost items.

So if you are interested or are bidding on my current batch of items be aware that eBay may or may not take them down.

I’m not sure how I’m going to proceed from here.

ebay listings

After 2 weeks off I've got 6 auctions up on eBay right now, one set of coffee jotters, 2 sets of regular recycled jotters, 1 set of 100% recycled jotters, and 2 auctions for the custom jotters.

You can find them all here.

DayJob Sales

One of my coworkers is heading off on vacation, which is pretty typical this time of year what’s not typical is that he has seen some of my work and placed a custom order. He’s getting 5 large recycled journals, 8 matchbook notebooks and a set of jotters. Not to forget the notebook he’s getting for himself. One of the main requests was that I include as many company logos on them as possible, as they are going to his former coworkers. I was more than happy to do that for him. The results are some highly company branded books. I’m finished with almost all of them except for one, his. I’m hoping to get some shots of the finished work tonight and post some highly photoshopped pictures.

Also my DayJob boss bought a large 400-page journal for her best friend who was recently married. I don’t usually like to sell books at work, but I figured what the heck, it’s a one shot deal. It’s always cool to see the reaction of a person who first gets the journal. I never get to see that, because the journals almost always go off into the mail. I’ve gotten to see the reaction twice now. It’s one thing when I make them for someone but another when they purchase them from me- the reaction is similar but so very cool. Anyway, the big smile on my Bosses’ face made my day. I can only imagine how excited her friend is going to be when she sees the giant behemoth of a journal for the first time.

Ebay Items

I listed 5 items to ebay today. 1 large recycled journal, 2 sets of jotters and 3 sets of matchbook notebooks. I lost a day of work this weekend when we spent some time at a family function but it’s all good they fed us. (The food was good.)

So you can find the eBay items here.

ebay and etsy sales

I’ve got 4 auctions ending Sunday. One each for the following items: PenSlip, Recycled Sign Cover notebook, Hedgehog with Graph Paper, and a hedgehog with cardstock pages.


I’ve got 3 items just listed, a set of 6 jotters, a set of graph paper jotters, and a set of recycled matchbook notebooks.

I’ve got some low buy-it-now prices and I’ve opened up my shipping to offer first class mail rather than just priority mail. I actually added this option after the USPS upped the price on their priority mail shipping but never announced it. I still believe that in most cases priority mail is the best way to go, especially if your ordering multiple items but I thought I’d give people a choice.

I”ll be loading some items up to etsy today as well. I’ve got a load of items on etsy- too many to list but you can see them all here.

Giant Hedgehogs!

I've been playing around with making hedgehogs in larger sizes fo awhile now, I make them in a VERY limited amount because I don't like the size as much as I like the smaller size. After all its all about making what I like. Occasionally I'll make something with other people in mind, but I conciously believe that my work turns out better not only when I believe it but when I like it. If I don't like it, they they don't turn out good at all.

Anyhow here are the 2 giant hedgehogs I made. I'll be listing them soon!

Recycled!

So All of these journals are done and have had their photos taken and will soon be listed on eBay or etsy.

Up on ebay and etsy.

I've spent a considerable amount of time in my studio the last 2 days. It happens to be the coolest place in the house! I've made a few penslips- listed 1 on eBay and 3 on etsy.



I've listed a recycled sign journal on eBay. I'll be listing a few more to etsy later today. I've gone through a frenzy of photography today and I must say that I think it's been good. I probably shot another 75 or so pics of journals. Crazy huh?

Jotters. Like I wrote below I made a load of them the other day, and you can expect fresh ones coming soon. I just got some fresh/ old signs to make new jotters. Some of them have a lot of print on them so they will be very interesting!

I'm melting

I’ve spent the majority of the day working on books and gluing up spines. I finished 3 small notebooks, with cardstock pages and place markers. 2 of the 3 have leather covers, flap and strap and the other is covered in recycled sign vinyl in pink.

I also spent a lot of time sewing up some hedgehogs. I did a bunch of them in card stock and a few with the new graph paper. It took a lot to make a regular thickness hedgehog, I think it was something like 250 pages! (Just checked 256!) That’s just a lot of paper. I’m used to cutting and folding about 160 to 180 pages for a hedgehog. This paper is SO thin. It’s nice though.

Tomorrow I’ll be gluing up the spines and putting them all in covers.

I also got some more recycled covers ready to go, so I folded up a bunch of paper for them. I’m going to print lined paper tomorrow morning and get that ready for Sunday.

Hopefully tomorrow will not be as freaking hot here in the North East as it was today. Luckily for me my studio is in the basement and that stayed pretty cool all day, but it is warmer than it was. This heat is crazy!

PIcs of the new journals tomorrow AM too.

New Jotters and Recycled journals

I made a bunch of new jotters and I've loaded a bunch of them up to ebay and etsy, find links below. I finally found a moderately priced pack of gridded paper, well, I suppose it moderately priced, as compared to other graph paper. 5 lines per inch instead of the overly large 4 lines per inch. I've got 2 packages up on eBay now and 1 on etsy.

Lined Sign Vinyl Journal on etsy.

Unlined Sign Vinyl Journal on etsy.

JOtters 100% recycled set 1.

Jotters 100% recycled set 2:

Jotter Wausau Paper Inside.

Jotter Recycled Graph Paper eBay.

Jotter Recycled Graph Paper 2 notebook Set.

jotters and graph paper

I’ve got a load of pictures to take and upload things to eBay and etsy. I’ve made and have bunched up a load of Jotters. Some are 100% recycled, some have Wausau paper and lastly some have graph paper. I found some graph paper in pads and I’m Cutting the glue off and using the paper.

About the graph paper, It’s not as easy to work with as other papers. It has a very soft feel too it, if that makes sense. A stack of 15 sheets is less stiff than most paper. Because it is soft feeling I’m able to put more pages into a jotter and most likely into a hedgehog as well. So these graph paper jotters have 60 pages. While sewing I also found the paper to be more slick that other paper, meaning that while I was working with it I could feel it shifting around. Knowing if I left it as is it would give me big problems on the sewing machine I used extra clamps to hold it in place while sewing and went very slowly. I only messed up one but even that one is good enough for me to use. So I’ll have some graph paper jotters up on etsy by the end of the day.

Because of the difficulty of making them and the expense of the paper I won’t be making a ton of them, I think anyway. I do like them, so I guess I have to weight out my option. Price wise they are a lot more expensive for me to make than a regular jotter of the same size. I guess we’ll see.

tonight tonight

Tonight I'll be posting more items on eBay. I had hoped to last night but I was totally wiped out after work so i came home and crashed. Work has been like that lately- exhausting.

I have a long weekend coming up so I'll be able to post plenty of things!

Ebay and Etsy- regarding Sign Vinyl Notebooks

In regard to notebooks made of sign vinyl for sale, I have a few up on etsy and I usually have them up on eBay as well. You can find them here and here.

(The one I had on eBay just sold, when I get home from the DayJob tonight I'll put another up.)

Everything Ends Today

Everything I have up on eBay ends today. I'll be loading a few more items up but not many! I'm keeping my eBay items limited. I'll have the majority of my items up on etsy.

This particular journal:

I would sell as a custom order for around $125. It's at a super low price right now. Get it while the getting is good!